Cypress Health Region – Swift Current Care Centre
Do you or does someone you know have a family member who resides at Swift Current Care Centre?
If so, you might want to know just how compromised the staffing levels have been since the forced shift changes. In 2 short months (January & February) the care providers worked short on eighteen days…sometimes with one fewer SCA, other times with two fewer SCA’s and other times without adequate nursing coverage from either a LPN or RN or both.
You might wonder how they can continue to provide safe care. The sad reality is that there are more and more jobs being posted every week. Since March 1, there have been 45 postings go up. The problem is that there are too few applicants. As an example, only one application was received for the recent posting of three Full-Time SCA positions at Swift Current Care Centre. 1 out of 3. These numbers are somewhat consistent with the number of days worked facing unsafe staffing levels.
So the government can protect the residents from unsafe staffing levels but ONLY when the care providers are at a bargaining table. Great protection, right?
Perhaps we should look back to when the 12 hour shifts were cancelled. Management told staff they could leave and go elsewhere to work if they did not like the new shift patterns. It looks like they listened. I sure hope that management has a plan on how they will provide care for the residents when they have no care providers. Don’t you?
It's time the health region comes to their senses and realizes that something has to be done before something happens to the residents in our care due to short staffing. Before the change to 12 hours we were never short staffed as much as we are now we had casual staff that were willing to work and full time staff that could work if needed as they were more rested as they had more days of to be rested. Now our casuals are dwindling and our full time staff are either working short or working with staff that are working OT sometimes in excess of 16 hours and sometimes this is in the process of working a 6 or 7 day stretch. Our moral is at an all time low and with some of us our health is being compromized leading to more OT and so and so on. Cypress Health wake up ! Your health care boat is sinking fast and we need you to throw us a life raft!
ReplyDeleteSince we went to the 8 hr shifts from the 12's there is a standard policy,(written in the staff book) not to replace unless there is no one left on that day. We are expected to work short by management as a cost cutting measure even if there is someone available to work the shift at regular time. Casuals don't get hours so they leave for other jobs and full times have to pull the slack for the short worker. Getting hard to find someone on the floor that even cares anymore. Come to work, do what you can and go home.
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